Spain: YouTube not liable for user uploads

A Spanish court confirms that users, not YouTube, are liable for the material …

Calling it a "clear victory for the Internet and the rules that govern it," YouTube today praised a Spanish court ruling which found that users—not YouTube—are liable for any copyright infringement in their uploaded videos.

Broadcaster Telecinco had asked the court to find otherwise, arguing that it simply wasn't fair for the rightsholder to monitor the Web for every instance of infringement. But Europe has a law much like the US "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); under it, rightsholders are supposed to monitor their own content and notify sites like YouTube, which must then take down infringing material.

A Madrid court upheld that approach, though not all national courts in Europe have done so—remember the infamous Italian decision to hold YouTube liable for an uploaded video showing kids abusing a developmentally disabled student?

"If Internet sites had to screen all videos, photos and text before allowing them on a website, many popular sites—not just YouTube, but Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others—would grind to a halt," said YouTube today, adding that it provides a content filtering service called "Content ID" that helps companies alleviate the burdening of continuous monitoring. (In its US court case against YouTube over some similar issues, media giant Viacom argued that YouTube initially used its Content ID tech as a competitive cudgel, only providing it to those companies willing to do deals with YouTube. If that was true once, it no longer appears to be YouTube policy.)